Support for Indie Authors discussion

I was wondering if someone here was familiar enough with the Amazon adds to help me out. I currently have a campaign running for targeted interest adds, but my dash keeps showing 0 impressions. Does this mean that no one is seeing my add, as in Amazon isn't postin it? If so, what can I do to remedy the problem? Thanks in advance for any help.

Hi, I started my own campaign two weeks ago now. So far, racked up just over 1000 "impressions", which are, from what I can see, how many times the ad was displayed. It did take a while for those to start adding up. From those 1000, only had 5 clicks so far, but they're both increasing as time goes on. Because it's targeted, it's only going to show when people are looking at those specific genres. It'll take a bit of time, but it will be shown. Good luck, and hope this helps!

Look at your keywords. Have you used the maximum amount of 1000? It takes a while to build them up - I'm still working on mine, but some of them are more successful than others. Also make sure they're appropriate to your book. If they're misleading they won't be acceptable. Mine is a sponsored product ad though, so maybe it works differently.
Good luck!

I ran my very first sponsor ad ever for a week. I had 95,304 impressions, 87 clicks, and...NO SALES!!! After emailing an author of a book on AMS ads that I previously purchased, I rewrote my ad based on his advice, and updated my blurb. My new ad has been running 5 days. I have 15,411 impressions, 26 clicks, and...NO SALES!!! I'm not sure what to try next. I'm monitoring my key words and pausing some of them based on the author's advice (e.g. pause any keyword that has 10 or more clicks and no sales). I'm not supposed to promote my book in these comments, but if you go to my author's page you can see for yourself. Does anyone have any ideas? (I have 200 plus keywords.)

Douglas wrote: "I ran my very first sponsor ad ever for a week. I had 95,304 impressions, 87 clicks, and...NO SALES!!! After emailing an author of a book on AMS ads that I previously purchased, I rewrote my ad bas..."

Could it be the price of your book that is putting people off? I don't know what an average price is in your genre or how long your book is but I saw that you're pricing it at $4.99. You could experiment with lowering the price and seeing if that makes any difference?

Have you checked your statistics on your author page? If you're signed up for Kindle Unlimited, you might have had downloads without realising it as it doesn't show as a sale on the ad. Sometimes it's more successful than actual book sales.

Thanks for your feedback, L.K. It's actually quite long (162,124 words.) The printed 6x9 version is 512 pages. I might try lowering the cost as you suggested, but I worked on it for 5 years, had it professionally edited, and $4.99 is at the low end of comparable books. [Sigh].

Ann wrote: "Have you checked your statistics on your author page? If you're signed up for Kindle Unlimited, you might have had downloads without realising it as it doesn't show as a sale on the ad. Sometimes i..."

Thanks for your feedback, Ann. Alas, I did not choose Kindle Unlimited.

If clicks aren't translating into sales, you might need to tweak your blurb. They're getting to your sales page, so like someone already said it could be price or maybe something about the book description that's keeping them from purchasing.

Douglas wrote: "Thanks for your feedback, L.K. It's actually quite long (162,124 words.) The printed 6x9 version is 512 pages. I might try lowering the cost as you suggested, but I worked on it for 5 years, had it..."

What genre is your book in? I write young adult and have found unless it's an already established series, most of them won't buy a book over 300 pages. What about your blurb? Is there a good hook there that is convincing people to jump in and buy it?

I understand working on a book for years and then having to price it lower to get sales.

1. Display Interest ads can takes weeks to turn on, especially if the bid is low.

2. Sponsored Product ads run on much lower bids, but they don't have as good a click through rate/buy rate as Display Interest ads.

3. Don't bother with Product Interest ads.

4. Average click through rate is 1 click per thousand. Any better than that and your cover/copy is doing its job.

5. Average buy/KU download rate is 1:30 - so 30 clicks for one KU download or purchase. If you aren't in KU it may be even more than this for sales only. If you have a nice salesy not-too-long blurb with good calls to action you can often get the rate down to 1:10 or 1:20.

6. Do not rely on the AMS report regarding sales. They often don't track sales from your ads and so you think you're losing money when you aren't. If you are in KU (which you should be if you're using amazon ads because you usually get 3-5 KU downloads for every sale so it can more than double your profit) it doesn't track KU downloads so that's income that isn't being reported.

7. Instead, track your ad spend and your income on KDP. Allow ads to run for AT LEAST two weeks before deciding if you're making money or not, because KU page reads take weeks to come in sometimes, so if you're in KU your income will gradually increase over time the longer you run ads.

8. Start with low bids. Ignore Amazon's recommended bid ranges - they're insane and unnecessary. I currently am getting impressions and clicks of 0.04 and 0.08 in a category with a recommended bid of 0.45. If you aren't getting impressions, then start a NEW ad (leave the cheap one running - sometimes they switch on after a few weeks and you'll get a bunch of cheap clicks) at a slightly higher bid rate and see if that does better.

9. Make sure your description is GOLDEN. There's no point paying for clicks if you can't sell your book at the other end. You need a tag line and hook, you need a clear genre description so people know what kind of a book they are looking at, and you need a call to action.

10. If you aren't getting clicks from impressions (minimum 1 click per thousand) your book cover needs work. If you aren't getting sales from clicks (at least one sale for every 30 clicks) then your description needs work.

Hope that helps!

C.L. wrote: "1. Display Interest ads can takes weeks to turn on, especially if the bid is low.

2. Sponsored Product ads run on much lower bids, but they don't have as good a click through rate/buy rate as Dis..."

So much information. Thank you. I didn't even know that was something you could do, set your own click bids. I thought the recommended bids were the minimums you could have!

Douglas wrote: "I ran my very first sponsor ad ever for a week. I had 95,304 impressions, 87 clicks, and...NO SALES!!! After emailing an author of a book on AMS ads that I previously purchased, I rewrote my ad bas..."

Douglas,

Would you please offer the steps of how to run the add please? My book launches 9/22/18 and I just added my Author's page. Thank you.

Alex wrote: "C.L. wrote: "1. Display Interest ads can takes weeks to turn on, especially if the bid is low.

2. Sponsored Product ads run on much lower bids, but they don't have as good a click through rate/bu..."

According to my math you're getting 1:60 in clicks. It looks like CL suggested trying to get it down to 1:30 since that's average. Not sure how to help that go down. How long have you been running it?

I'd say to give it a few more days that way you have a better idea of how it's tracking.

Alex wrote: "My latest ad, using the keywords you kindly supplied currently has

1,090 impressions
18 clicks
3 orders"

Yes, those are GREAT numbers. Ad Conversion rate of 1.65 - AWESOME - Sales Conversion Rate of 1:6! Stellar!

BUT -as I said above, do NOT use the AMS report to calculate orders. Use your sales dashboard. AMS is not reliable.

Next step would be to figure out how much one sale is worth to you. If your first book is free, look at your historical data since your latest book came out - how many downloads of your free book does it take to get a purchase of a subsequent book?

Using that number you can figure out how much you can afford to bid.

No worries - and if you want to give me your historical numbers I can calculate out how much one sale/download of book 1 is worth.

Nicole wrote: "Douglas wrote: "I ran my very first sponsor ad ever for a week. I had 95,304 impressions, 87 clicks, and...NO SALES!!! After emailing an author of a book on AMS ads that I previously purchased, I r..."

Nicole wrote: "Douglas wrote: "I ran my very first sponsor ad ever for a week. I had 95,304 impressions, 87 clicks, and...NO SALES!!! After emailing an author of a book on AMS ads that I previously purchased, I r..."

Nicole, I purchased a Kindle book called Easy AMS Ads, by M.L. Humphrey. It goes through the basics, step-by-step, and was very useful. I could have my Kindle next to me, and my computer in front of me, and just followed along.

Douglas wrote: "Thanks for your feedback, L.K. It's actually quite long (162,124 words.) The printed 6x9 version is 512 pages. I might try lowering the cost as you suggested, but I worked on it for 5 years, had it..."

I'm not saying that your kindle book isn't worth every penny of that $4.99 and that price may be at the lower cost of comparable books. In truth that is a "goodly" amount for a reader to spend on a new (for them) author for a kindle book.

Susan wrote: "Douglas wrote: "Thanks for your feedback, L.K. It's actually quite long (162,124 words.) The printed 6x9 version is 512 pages. I might try lowering the cost as you suggested, but I worked on it for..."
I disagree. My book sells at $4.99. In my experience it isn't worth seeking bargain hunters because they won't buy your other books in your series either.

If you are spending money on ads you NEED to keep your price high. Not only does it cover the cost of the ads, but it also encourages KU readers to download the book. They love feeling like they got a deal, reading a 4.99 book for free!

As long as the book has a decent number of reviews and good description, people will pay money for a book they want to read.

Some markets are more price sensitive than others - romance readers, for example, often read so voraciously that they can't afford expensive books. But generally speaking, even if you sell half as many books at $4.99 than at $1.99, you'll still make more money, and the people who download your book are much more likely to actually read it.

Douglas - if your book is that long I strongly recommend going KU. If you get paid by the page and you have a long book that's more money.

Jack wrote: "Thank you to everyone on here, so much information. As an 'older person, newer writer' I find marketing an enormous brick wall, not helped by the amount of contradictory advice out there.
Many new ..."

Yes, sponsored interest ads go by keyword, and often entering the titles of books or authors in your genre help get clicks. Software like KDP rocket can help you generate those lists. If you DM me with some keywords related to your book (specific genre, that sort of thing) I can email you some keyword lists from KDP Rocket.

So good to have you around, C.L!

C.L. wrote: "Jack wrote: "Thank you to everyone on here, so much information. As an 'older person, newer writer' I find marketing an enormous brick wall, not helped by the amount of contradictory advice out the..."

Do you find KDP Rocket cost effective? I would love to get more keywords for my AMS ads. Thank you in advance C.L.

I haven't taken the plunge into Amazon Ads yet as I've found the whole thing overwhelming. I've now purchased the book, Easy AMS Ads and am learning a lot from all of your posts and hope to make some sense out of the process. Thank you!!

David wrote: "C.L. wrote: "Jack wrote: "Thank you to everyone on here, so much information. As an 'older person, newer writer' I find marketing an enormous brick wall, not helped by the amount of contradictory a..."

I know I'm not C. L. but KDP Rocket is worth the price. It is has multiple functions which make your life a lot easier. Once you pay fro it. you get updates for the life of the program. It helps on categories, niches, key words, books like yours, etc. If you are doing everything yourself, this is one of those tools like one of the editors (Grammerly, ProWritingaid) or writing software (Word, Scrivener, Mac Pages) you'll find yourself using when you are writing or planning to publish. Hope that helps.

David wrote: "Do you find KDP Rocket cost effective? I would love to get more keywords for my AMS ads. Thank you in advance C.L. "

It is worth the price to me because I do so much advertising and am constantly trying to come up with new keyword lists.

For those who don't plan to get seriously involved in advertising on amazon or who only have one book, I wouldn't bother. I'd rather you email me and I can get you some keyword lists for free.

If those lists work for you and you want to make more, try KDP rocket. They have a money back guarantee.

$97...! Um...

As C.L. says, it's better to have several books to try this on.

Um... I'll carry on thinking. I'm wondering if I've already done all the work!

Thanks for the fed back, seems like I got a lot of things I can try...unfortunately my poor computer is trying to crossover to where ever it computers go when they die. But I did get KDP Rocket and am running some trials with it. So far no luck, but it did give me an idea of what people search for, I'll run another trial but tailor my adds to fit each of the three groups I came up with. This whole marketing thing is a huge learning curve it seems.

Catherine wrote: "Hurray! I'm here to bookwhack!"

Stop it.

Alex wrote: "Thanks, C.L. I'm currently bidding £0.10 a click with a daily limit of £1, can't afford to risk more than that at the moment.

I've got a spreadsheet with my sales figures going back since I first..."

How did you manage to get your ads onto Amazon UK, Alex? I've read, and heard, that you need to be in 'Amazon Advantage' to be able to do this, but when I looked at the relevant page earlier today and tried to click on the 'further information' button, there was no link. Given the recent crop of glitches on the .com site, I wouldn't be surprised if they were updating the UK version.